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Dorikka comments on What are you working on? - Less Wrong Discussion
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I am trying to understand personal interaction in a semi-technical fashion in order for me to have mental models which are intuitive enough to me which can guide me in casual (and, later, business) interaction. I've read through some of the OB posts on status and I'm currently reading the book Impro (which Robin Hanson recommends here). I've also partially made it through Dale Carnegie's How to Make Friends and Influence People. Book suggestions are very welcome.
Please keep us posted on the results.
Robert Greene - The 48 Laws of Power. About the same level of cynicism as Hanson but more instructional. Very entertaining. :)
A problem with knowing about such 'laws' is that you'll start perceiving false positives in other people and will hate them for using those techniques against you.
I don't consider the willful maintenance of false illusions to be sustainable way of securing oneself against disillusionment.
I note that if you start hating foks for using those techniques against you then you are probably already ignoring Greene's advice. He consistently advises against taking things personally while also describing just how 'hating people for doing X' is itself a manipulative technique for gaining power.
I don't think that I understand everything that you're saying.
This is a valid concern, but I'm not sure how it relates to this:
Regardless of whether you are vulnerable to such techniques, I don't see why hearing arguments for their existence would harm you. (I can see that it would be a waste of time if they turned out to be useless, but from what little I've read of him, it would be a mistake to gamble on the hypothesis that they will be useless by not reading him at all.)
I said it is a problem, a potential bias that needs be to countered. It was not my intention to suggest that one shouldn't learn about unethical persuasion techniques or the like. I actually ordered the book.
A few times I was accused of, and saw people on LW accusing others of using some kind of 'forbidden' rhetoric against them while I never even heard about such a technique before and which I was sure the person who has been accused never intended to deploy deliberately. This shines a bad light on people who have been accused. The right way would be to kindly remind them of the shortcomings of their argument or that their style of response might be harmful in a discussion with the purpose of dissolving confusion, refining rationality or understanding disagreement.
Really? From what I've read of Greene's books (while I was stayed in "User:"Cosmos's room in NYC...), his general format seems to be:
1) Give gripping narrative of historical event.
2) Shoehorn the event to use as validation for some vaguely-specified "law" ("Don't be afraid", "act covertly", etc.)
EDIT: And that can probably be expanded to:
3) When you have enough of these, combine them into a book.
4) In response to popularity, generate new books, scraping bottom of barrel as necessary.
Dorikka already mentioned reading through Robin Hanson's posts on status. In terms of 'Shoehorning', if he can stomach Hanson I expect him to consider Greene altogether benign.
The forthcoming Tempo has potential as a guide to strategic interaction within an organizational context, based on the author's insightful blog.
Non-book suggestion: I think it is likely that at a certain point practice becomes more important than reading. I'd be wary of spending too much time in the books and not enough in the field. My most successful means of getting lots of practice was direct sales, but this is emphatically not for everyone.
Any thoughts on how something like this could work in a group setting? I confess to being a little stumped.